Dell XPS M1330 Laptop Review

Dell has crammed just about every new bit of technology available for notebooks into the XPS M1330, and the result is a sleek thin-and-light that should impress even the most jaded PC buyers. Models in this series start at a reasonable $1,299, though options and upgrades pushed our test unit to $2,554—not cheap, but still reasonable for a notebook of this caliber.

The M1330's wedge profile is just under an inch thick at the front and 1.3 inches at the back. Though it just misses the mark for a "true" ultraportable, the 4-pound system is still very light and easy to carry. Available in matte "tuxedo black" or "crimson red" (each with brushed-aluminum accents), the design is sharp and understated, with no sign of gaudy glowing lights anywhere.

Our bundle included Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, a 15-month subscription to Norton Internet Security 2007, a pair of earbuds, an attractive slipcase for the notebook, and an extended nine-cell battery that protrudes out the back and bottom, adding to the wedge effect. (The base configuration of the M1330 comes standard with a four-cell battery; it and a third option, a six-cell power pack, sit flush with the back of the chassis.) Each battery has a five-segment LED charge meter, so you can check the status of the battery simply by looking at the bottom of the notebook. A fingerprint reader, Webcam, Bluetooth and 802.11a/g/n wireless, and embedded Dell Wireless Broadband connectivity rounded out our test configuration's very complete set of options.

The M1330 is a joy to use. The full-size keyboard is exceedingly comfortable to type on, and we love the touch-sensitive multimedia control buttons above the function-key row. The touch pad and mouse buttons are slightly small, but the buttons are quiet, and the pad includes marked horizontal and vertical scroll areas.

The real draw is the option to get a wide-screen (1,280x800) LED-backlit display—a $200 premium that's worth every penny. Employing 32 LEDs instead of a fluorescent tube to illuminate the LCD pixels, it's brighter than traditional screens and delivers a higher contrast ratio that makes images pop. The LEDs also use anywhere from 25 percent to 66 percent less power than a fluorescent tube (depending on the brightness level), boosting battery life. On the M1330, DVDs showed lifelike color reproduction and very good shadow detail. Sound quality from the built-in stereo speakers was a bit thin and lacking in bass, but they delivered respectable volume for a portable this size, with no distortion.

We were happy to see a slot-loading CD/DVD burner as opposed to a traditional tray drive, but we suspect the drive in our test unit had a firmware bug. When we were prompted to insert the second disc while installing a multidisc software title (the game F.E.A.R., to be precise), the eject button failed to surrender the first disc. The only way to get the disc out was to cancel out of the installation process and hit the eject button again, which got us our disc but prevented us from actually installing the program. (Dell is looking into the issue.)

Our configuration of the M1330 delivered very good performance for a thin-and-light. Equipped with a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM (the system accepts up to 4GB), nVidia GeForce Go 8400 GS graphics, and a 5,400rpm 160GB hard drive, it scored a solid 4,523 on Futuremark's PCMark05, showing it can more than handle productivity chores. Its showing of 1,893 on Futuremark's 3DMark06 means avid 3D gamers will want to look elsewhere, but it's got chops enough to handle games at lower resolution and graphics-effects settings.

Multimedia enthusiasts will be heartened by the M1330's respectable showing on Cinebench 9.5 (a score of 675) and Windows Media Encoder 9 (7 minutes and 3 seconds). It also fared acceptably on our iTunes conversion test, requiring 6 minutes and 18 seconds to convert our sample tracks. The nine-cell battery delivered just over three hours of runtime on our DVD drain test, which should equate to almost five hours in normal use.

The M1330 has most of the inputs and outputs you would expect (USB, FireWire, flash-memory-card reader, ExpressCard slot, VGA, LAN), plus two headphone jacks and a welcome High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port for connecting to an external high-definition television (HDTV). But the laptop has only two USB ports (most laptops nowadays have at least three) and no modem jack (so dial-up users need not apply).

With its handsome design, sharp screen, and extensive list of options, it's hard not to love the Dell XPS M1330. For buyers who need a constant computing companion, it's worth a long look.